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Read books online » Fiction » My Doggie and I by R. M. Ballantyne (free e books to read .TXT) 📖

Book online «My Doggie and I by R. M. Ballantyne (free e books to read .TXT) đŸ“–Â». Author R. M. Ballantyne



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to see her, doctor, for I’ve made up my mind to take that old ’ooman up, as the bobbies say w’en they’re wexed with avin’ nuffin’ to do ’xcept strut about the streets like turkey-cocks. I’ll take ’er up and do for ’er, I will.”

On questioning him further I found that this ragged and homeless little waif had indeed been touched by Mrs Willis’s sad story, and drawn towards her by her soft, gentle nature—so different from what he had hitherto met with in his wanderings,—and that he was resolved to offer her his gratuitous services as a message-boy and general servant, without requiring either food or lodging in return.

“But Mrs Willis may object to such a dirty ragged fellow coming about her,” said I.

“Ain’t there no pumps in London, stoopid?” said Slidder, with a look of pity, “no soap?”

“True,” I replied, with a laugh, “but you’d require needles and thread and cloth, in addition, to make yourself respectable.”

“Nothink of the sort; I can beg or borrer or steal coats and pants, you know.”

“Ah, Slidder!” said I, in a kind but serious tone, “doubtless you can, but begging or borrowing are not likely to succeed, and stealing is wrong.”

“D’you think so?” returned the boy, with a look of innocent surprise. “Don’t you think, now, that in a good cause a cove might:—

“‘Take wot isn’t his’n,

An’ risk his bein’ sent to pris’n?’”

I replied emphatically that I did not think so, that wrong could never be made right by any means, and that the commencement of a course of even disinterested kindness on such principles would be sure to end ill.

“Vell, then, I’ll reconsider my decision, as the maginstrates ought to say, but never do.”

“That’s right. And now we must part, Slidder,” I said, stopping. “Here is the second sixpence I promised you, also my card and address. Will you come and see me at my own house the day after to-morrow, at eight in the morning?”

“I will,” replied the boy, with decision; “but I say, all fair an’ above-board? No school-boardin’ nor nuffin’ o’ that sort—hey? honour bright?”

“Honour bright!” I replied, holding out my hand, which he grasped and shook quite heartily.

We had both taken two or three steps in opposite directions, when, as if under the same impulse, we looked back at each other, and in so doing became aware of the fact that Dumps stood between us on the pavement in a state of extreme indecision or mental confusion.

“Hallo! I say! we’ve bin an’ forgot Punch!” exclaimed the boy.

“Dumps,” said I, “come along!”

“Punch,” said he, “come here, good dog!”

My doggie looked first at one, then at the other. The two indicators in front rose and fell, while the one behind wagged and drooped in a state of obvious uncertainty.

“Won’t you sell ’im back?” said Slidder, returning. “I’ll work it out in messages or anythink else.”

“But what of the bobbies?” I asked.

“Ah! true, I forgot the bobbies. I’d on’y be able to keep ’im for a week, p’r’aps not so long, afore they’d nab him.—Go, Punch, go, you don’t know ven you’re vell off.”

The tone in which this was uttered settled the point, and turned the wavering balance of the creature’s affections in my favour. With all the indicators extremely pendulous, and its hairy coat hanging in a species of limp humility, my doggie followed me home; but I observed that, as we went along, he ever and anon turned a wistful glance in the direction in which the ragged waif had disappeared.

Chapter Four. In Which Dumps Finds Another Old Friend.

One morning, a considerable time after the events narrated in the last chapter, I sat on the sofa waiting for breakfast, and engaged in an interesting conversation with Dumps. The only difference in our mode of communication was that Dumps talked with his eyes, I with my tongue.

From what I have already said about my doggie, it will be understood that his eyes—which were brown and speaking eyes—lay behind such a forest of hair that it was only by clearing the dense masses away that I could obtain a full view of his liquid orbs. I am not sure that his ears were much less expressive than his eyes. Their variety of motion, coupled with their rate of action, served greatly to develop the full meaning of what his eyes said.

“Mrs Miff seems to have forgotten us this morning, Dumps,” I remarked, pulling out my watch.

One ear cocked forward, the other turned back towards the door, and a white gleam under the hair, indicating that the eyes turned in the same direction, said as plainly as there was any occasion for—

“No; not quite forgotten us. I hear her coming now.”

“Ha! so she is. Now you shall have a feed.” Both ears elevated to the full extent obviously meant “Hurrah!” while a certain motion of his body appeared to imply that, in consequence of his sedentary position, he was vainly attempting to wag the sofa.

“If you please, sir,” said my landlady, laying the breakfast tray on the table, “there’s a shoe-black in the kitchen says he wants to see you.”

“Ah! young Slidder, I fancy. Well, send him up.”

“He says he’s ’ad his breakfast an’ will wait till you have done, sir.”

“Very considerate. Send him up nevertheless.”

In a few minutes my protégé stood before me, hat in hand, looking, in the trim costume of the brigade, quite a different being from the ragged creature I had met with in Whitechapel. Dumps instantly assaulted him with loving demonstrations.

“How spruce you look, my boy!”

“Thanks to you, sir,” replied Slidder, with a familiar nod; “they do say I’m lookin’ up.”

“I hope you like the work. Have you had breakfast? Would a roll do you any good?”

“Thankee, I’m primed for the day. I came over, sir, to say that granny seems to me to be out o’ sorts. Since I’ve been allowed to sleep on the rug inside her door, I’ve noticed that she ain’t so lively as she used to was. Shivers a deal w’en it ain’t cold, groans now an’ then, an whimpers a good deal. It strikes me, now—though I ain’t a reg’lar sawbones—that there’s suthin’ wrong with her in’ards.”

“I’ll finish breakfast quickly and go over with you to see her,” said I.

“Don’t need to ’urry, sir,” returned Slidder; “she ain’t wery bad—not much wuss than or’nary—on’y I’ve bin too anxious about her—poor old thing. I’ll vait below till you’re ready.—Come along, Punch, an’ jine yer old pal in the kitchen till the noo ’un’s ready.”

After breakfast we three hurried out and wended our way eastward. As the morning was unusually fine I diverged towards one of the more fashionable localities to deliver a note with which I had been charged. Young Slidder’s spirits were high, and for a considerable time he entertained me with a good deal of the East-end gossip. Among other things, he told me of the great work that was being done there by Dr Barnardo and others of similar spirit, in rescuing waifs like himself from their wretched condition.

“Though some on us don’t think it so wretched arter all,” he continued. “There’s the Slogger, now, he won’t go into the ’ome on no consideration; says he wouldn’t give a empty sugar-barrel for all the ’omes in London. But then the Slogger’s a lazy muff. He don’t want to work—that’s about it. He’d sooner starve than work. By consikence he steals, more or less, an finds a ’ome in the ‘stone jug’ pretty frequent. As to his taste for a sugar-barrel, I ain’t so sure that I don’t agree with ’im. It’s big, you know—plenty of room to move, w’ich it ain’t so with a flour-barrel. An’ then the smell! Oh! you’ve no notion! W’y, that’s wuth the price of a night’s lodgin’ itself, to say nothin’ o’ the chance of a knot-hole or a crack full o’ sugar, that the former tenants has failed to diskiver.”

While the waif was commenting thus enthusiastically on the bliss of lodging in a sugar-barrel, we were surprised to see Dumps, who chanced to be trotting on in front come to a sudden pause and gaze at a lady who was in the act of ringing the door-bell of an adjoining house.

The door was opened by a footman, and the lady was in the act of entering when Dumps gave vent to a series of sounds, made up of a whine, a bark, and a yelp. At the same moment his tail all but twirled him off his legs as he rushed wildly up the stairs and began to dance round the lady in mad excitement.

The lady backed against the door in alarm. The footman, anxious apparently about his calves, seized an umbrella and made a wild assault on the dog, and I was confusedly conscious of Slidder exclaiming, “Why, if that ain’t my young lady!” as I sprang up the steps to the rescue.

“Down, Dumps, you rascal; down!” I exclaimed, seizing him by the brass collar with which I had invested him.—“Pardon the rudeness of my dog, madam,” I said, looking up; “I never saw him act in this way before. It is quite unaccountable—”

“Not quite so unaccountable as you think,” interrupted Slidder, who stood looking calmly on, with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.—“It’s your own dog, miss.”

“What do you mean, boy?” said the lady, a gaze of surprise chasing away the look of alarm which had covered her pretty face.

“I mean ’xactly what I says, miss. The dog’s your own: I sold it to you long ago for five bob!”

The girl—for she was little more than sixteen—turned with a startled, doubting look to the dog.

“If you don’t b’lieve it, miss, look at the vite spot on the bridge of ’is nose,” said Slidder, with a self-satisfied nod to the lady and a supremely insolent wink to the footman.

“Pompey!” exclaimed the girl, holding out a pair of the prettiest little gloved hands imaginable.

My doggie broke from my grasp with a shriek of joy, and sprang into her arms. She buried her face in his shaggy neck and absolutely hugged him.

I stood aghast. The footman smiled in an imbecile manner.

“You’d better not squeeze quite so hard, miss, or he’ll bust!” remarked the waif.

Recovering herself, and dropping the dog somewhat hurriedly, she turned to me with a flushed face and said—

“Excuse me, sir; this unexpected meeting with my dog—”

“Your dog!” I involuntarily exclaimed, while a sense of unmerited loss began to creep over me.

“Well, the dog was mine once, at all events—though I doubt not it is rightfully yours now,” said the young lady, with a smile that at once disarmed me. “It was stolen from me a few months after I had bought it from this boy, who seems strangely altered since then. I’m glad, however, to see that the short time I had the dog was sufficient to prevent its forgetting me. But perhaps,” she added, in a sad tone, “it would have been better if it had forgotten me.”

My mind was made up.

“No, madam,” said I, with decision; “it is well that the dog has not forgotten you. I would have been surprised, indeed, if it had. It is yours. I could not think of robbing you of it. I—I—am going to visit a sick woman and cannot delay; forgive me if I ask permission to leave the dog with you until I return in the afternoon to hand it formally over and bid it farewell.”

This was said half in jest yet I felt very much in earnest, for the thought of parting from my doggie, even to such a fair mistress, cost me no small amount of pain—much to my surprise, for I had not imagined it possible that I could have formed so strong an attachment to a dumb animal in so short a time. But, you see, being a bachelor of an unsocial spirit, my doggie and I had been thrown much together in the evenings, and had made the most

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